This morning, I woke up with a perfectly blended mash-up of Eric Clapton's "Wonderful Tonight" and Lionel Richie's "Stuck On You." It was prompted by last night's re-watching of the Friends episode where Monica and Chandler get engaged; they dance to the Clapton song over the end credits. These songs have always been glued to each other in my head. Maybe it's the relatively similar tempo, key, and song structure, but whenever one of them enters my consciousness, the other one seamlessly follows.
In fact, I often play, in my mind's music studio, the intro guitar riff to "Wonderful Tonight," then go right into the first verse of "Stuck On You," then back into Clapton's riff unconsciously before my brain recognizes that I'm melding the two songs. You know, now that I'm listening close, the guitar riffs actually sound almost identical.
There's a further twist in this mental mash-up of mine: at certain points when these songs have appeared in my head historically, I have also searched my '70s/'80s mental catalogue of radio hits, always with the nagging sensation that there was a third song stuck to "Stuck On You" and "Wonderful Tonight." I'm realizing now, though, as I play these songs side by side, that this "third" song is probably just a mental creation, my brain explaining the cognitive mystery of why these songs also sound like some unidentifiable country tune that I want to attribute to someone like B.J. Thomas or Gordon Lightfoot. As Lionel Richie's image knowingly tips his ten gallon hat to us from the cover photo of his 1984 single, I'm guessing that my brain was just trying to explain why I'm hearing what is essentially a country-pop song written by an R&B legend. Kind of awesome how the brain compensates and creates "realities" that don't exist.
Artist (Stuck On You): Lionel Richie
Year: 1984
Rating: Warm
Artist (Wonderful Tonight): Eric Clapton
Year: 1977
Rating: Cold
Yes, yes, yes! You obviously know that these two songs have always gone together in my head.
ReplyDeleteFantastic!
ReplyDelete...and, darn you for sticking these songs into my head.
Ha! I do my best to pawn off my own earworms onto others: the risk of reading this blog, my friend.
ReplyDeleteThe third song you're thinking of is "Lay Lady Lay" by Bob Dylan. It sounds like "Stuck On You". Of course, so does "Sail On" by The Commodores. (And the verse melody of Bush's "Glycerine" sounds like the guitar riff of "Wonderful Tonight". And the verse chords of "Glycerine" sound like the chords of "Don't Stop Believin'" by Journey or "With Or Without You" by U2.)
ReplyDeleteHi Mary! I wish I'd replied to your comment--gah--SIX years ago--so, my apologies! My creative projects move in glacial epochs. BUT, thank you for dropping all this know-how about pop structure! At some point years ago, I got a LOT of enjoyment out of Axis of Awesome's hilarious Four Chord Song (link)
Deletehttps://youtu.be/5pidokakU4I?si=T8g1nfaH4OgeJKl4
...which, if you haven't seen yet, you really must. (With 89 million views since 2009, I doubt you missed it.) Thanks!
I, too, thought it sounded like something from Gordon Lightfoot. We must be onto something!
ReplyDeleteAnybody?
Hi, Anon! Thanks so much for chiming in on this! Your comment from a few days ago has nudged me to reply to other ancient comments on this now pretty neglected blog, so thanks for the encouragement!
DeleteI still don't really know which Gordon Lightfoot song this riff or progression reminds me of. I don't think it's the famous intro to Edmund Fitzgerald. But if we wanna talk EPIC Gordon Lightfoot mashups, we need to acknowledge that Whitney Houston's The Greatest Love of All, written by Michael Masser, took 24 bars directly from If You Could Read My Mind! Lightfoot had the class not to get Whitney in trouble for this, and Masser issued an apology. Check out this great blog post about the case over at That Song Sounds Like: (link)
https://www.thatsongsoundslike.com/2021/07/03/whitney-houstons-the-greatest-love-of-all-lifted-from-gordon-lightfoot/